Waiting for the introduction of the new pope left me bored and excited. Bored because the wait in the Eternal City seemed to be taking an eternity, and excited because he might be revealed any second. There was no way to tell when the moment would come. At least, I didn’t believe there was until the seagull landed.
It was chilly and damp on the roof of the convent overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Rome. In March 2013, we built a set among the nuns for the CBS Evening News. I was anchoring our coverage of the election of a new pope after the astonishing resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the first pope to retire in nine hundred years. I was supposed to be on a family vacation to Easter Island. As often, the family went without me. “Nine hundred years and they pick this week,” I muttered to myself. Our set had a high, commanding view of St. Peter’s Square, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel—the entire Holy See (which derives from the Latin Sancta Sedes or “Holy Seat”).
The College of Cardinals flew in from around the world to roost in the Sistine Chapel where they would ask God’s guidance in their vote. The Catholic world was waiting for the traditional white smoke from the chapel’s metal stovepipe that would signal success. The first day, March 12, was filled mostly with ceremony, prayer and oaths sworn by the 115 cardinal electors in attendance. Late in the day, inside the chapel, the Papal Master of Ceremonies called, “Extra omnes!” or “Everybody out!” The electors were sealed in, watched over by God himself at the center of Michelangelo’s masterpiece ceiling. There was time that first day for only one ballot. Black smoke rose from the chimney indicating that no cardinal received the required two-thirds vote to become pope. The second day, two rounds of votes in the morning were inconclusive. All I could do, sitting in the drizzle, was prepare. I read over my notes on the three dozen most-likely candidates. An associate producer handed me a sheaf of legal-sized papers. Each page listed five candidates and a short biography so I would have something to say immediately when the pope’s name was pronounced in Latin, from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. “I’m really sorry,” the young man apologized, handing me the notes. “We couldn’t get these in alphabetical order. They’re completely random.” I looked at the pages, numbered one through seven with five cardinals per page. I thanked the associate producer, praised his effort and thought, “I’ll never find the right guy listed randomly in all these pages while we’re on the air.”
Early that evening, I noticed one of Rome’s recently ubiquitous seagulls gliding in from the low, gray sky. He (or she?) came to perch on top of the Sistine Chapel chimney, which had been so stingy with history. I asked one of our cameramen to tape a close-up of the roosting gull. This passed for amusement at the time. It was after 6:00 p.m. The sun had long crossed the Tiber River and was settling into the Seven Hills. The rotund bird, white with dove gray wings, gripped the edge of the pipe with yellow talons and remained for the longest time. As the shadows climbed up Bramante’s basilica dome, the damp chill fell to forty-three degrees. After dark, just on the far side of seven o’clock, the bird heaved its wings and jumped off the chimney. Seconds later, I saw why the bird bailed. It must have gotten hot up there. At 7:06 p.m. local time, the pipe exhaled white smoke. We flashed onto the CBS network with a Special Report. In short order it was announced the new pope was Jorge Bergoglio, formerly Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He became the first pontiff from the Americas. He selected the pontifical name of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi.
It didn’t hit me at the moment, but about four hours later, when I was working with Chief Editor Jerry Cipriano on the copy for the CBS Evening News, I blurted out, “The bird!” Jerry looked up in surprise. “What bird?” he asked.
St. Francis is the patron saint of animals and the environment. He is nearly always depicted in paintings and sculpture with a bird in his hand. I was amused and metaphysically intrigued, so I wrote an essay for the end of the broadcast featuring the images of the gull on the stovepipe:
Finally, tonight, if you believe in signs, you might have guessed the name of the new pope before the smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel. When this bird landed, we joked that it was a gull from the Holy See, “Holy See-gull,” but if we’d only been more thoughtful, we might have imagined Saint Francis. Saint Francis—nearly always pictured with a bird in hand—is the twelfth-century founder of the Friars, known as the Franciscans, who celebrated poverty and nature. His name was the answer to the first question asked of Cardinal Bergoglio the instant he became pope, ‘By what name will you be called?’ When Pope Francis appeared to the world, he was wearing not the gold, jeweled, papal cross but a simple wooden cross of his own. It will be lighter as he bears the heavy cross of a church struggling to find its way into a third millennium, a new pope, from the New World, for a new age.
After the Evening News, the TV lights went out and cold cups of coffee vaulted into trash cans. Our set on the roof was a muddle of soggy old notes and research papers. As I started cleaning up, I noticed the hopeless jumble of papal candidates that the well-meaning associate producer had handed me hours earlier. Among the three dozen cardinals, scrambled in nonalphabetical order across seven pages, I noticed Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina listed first—at the top of page one. Quite a coincidence.
Unless you believe in signs.